EDIT: Ok looking a bit more than just a glance at the pics and I think what's bothering me is the cel shaded look is feeling like it's almost lost with the addition of more realistic shadows. Maybe if they need to reduce the fade to make the shadows a bit more hard lined it might work better? I dun know.

I have a few. Lemme see if I can count 'em. Ice Hockey, Super Metroid, Kirby's Dreamland (which I probably won't repurchase), Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III. So basically about $4 or $5 total, so not TOO bad.

Though I just realized I DID grab Phoenix Wright 3 for Wii. Hrm.

Super Metroid will be on sale for 30¢ in the month of May as part of their Famicom 30th anniversary celebration.

SMT x Fire Emblem (I'm guessing Devil Survivor here?)
New 3D Mario (playable at E3) EDIT: Not sure if this is a 3DS game as it's from the 3D Land team.
New Mario Kart (right on schedule, also at E3)
Wind Waker HD
New Zelda Game in the works (I think this was a given)
Spring Firmware Update
Native Virtual Console after Spring Update

Haven't read the articles as I'm at work, but that's the headlines so far

Yeah, oddly enough this Nintendo Direct has certainly pushed me to "I'm buying one". I just need to figure out when I can budget the WiiU in before I move.

I'd wait until E3 or the fall unless you absolutely need to play anything before E3. Nintendo pushes out a good supply of their games, so you'll have no trouble finding "evergreen" titles like NSMBU or NintendoLand. I'm only advocating waiting only because if they're doing a price drop this year it'll be by the fall in order to make a better value proposition against the new Sony or MS consoles. Pretty much everything announced today is coming out for the holiday season or later.

Never mind the hypocrisy of 2012's best selling lists containing a lot of "2" and "3" in the game titles.

Well yeah...You have to buy the game in order to complain about it, right?

I actually think (depending on how my check shakes out), I might actually be able to swing a WiiU at the beginning of February I can play some Wii games I missed out on while I wait for all the other games to come out!

Of course it is. Otherwise that general blanket bad mouthing thing wouldn't be kosher.

In all perfect seriousness, I was happy to have Iwata apologize for the lack of new releases following launch. Regardless of all the "industry doesn't work that way"s and "you have all these [iffy ports and three or four good original games], what are you whining about?"s, I've been unable to shake the feeling I alluded to earlier until today. Somehow, recognition of the fact that this could've been a more exciting launch window makes me feel better. Having plenty to look forward to helps as well.

Yeah, oddly enough this Nintendo Direct has certainly pushed me to "I'm buying one". I just need to figure out when I can budget the WiiU in before I move.

I'd wait until E3 or the fall unless you absolutely need to play anything before E3. Nintendo pushes out a good supply of their games, so you'll have no trouble finding "evergreen" titles like NSMBU or NintendoLand. I'm only advocating waiting only because if they're doing a price drop this year it'll be by the fall in order to make a better value proposition against the new Sony or MS consoles. Pretty much everything announced today is coming out for the holiday season or later.

Only as stated, my family will need a replacement Wii. My parents and niece have games for the Wii and that means either I'll be leaving mine behind or taking it away from them, leaving them with worthless games. I planned on handing the Wii down anyway and my sister already offered $75 for it, so I'll be grabbing the WiiU sooner rather than later (though I feel like the best decision would be to wait for the price drop or at least the updates to speed up the OS. Ah well).

Of course it is. Otherwise that general blanket bad mouthing thing wouldn't be kosher.

In all perfect seriousness, I was happy to have Iwata apologize for the lack of new releases following launch. Regardless of all the "industry doesn't work that way"s and "you have all these [iffy ports and three or four good original games], what are you whining about?"s, I've been unable to shake the feeling I alluded to earlier until today. Somehow, recognition of the fact that this could've been a more exciting launch window makes me feel better. Having plenty to look forward to helps as well.

I don't think there's been any "general blanket bad mouthing" in here, but I also think people had a valid question about "where are the games?"

With that said I'll probably pick one up in the next couple of months with these new developments coming out today.

So I read through his list of "possible blockers", and I'm torn. What would most likely block a JP or US re-release of Mother 2/Earthbound seems to almost certainly be related to the arrangements of various music throughout the game.

On the one hand, I feel like most of the arrangements should fall under fair use/homage/parody. I see it like Weird Al using the original song arrangement when making his parody songs, or sampling of tracks to make new tracks. My cursory Google-fu shows that you are free to make new arrangements as derivative works, but the moment you go commercial you have to work out licensing and royalties with the original rights holder. I'm not sure how this works in the music biz, between Weird Al's use of original songs in his parody songs, or the prevalence of sampling done in hip-hop - do they track down the original rights holders, obtain a license, and pay royalties on everything? Seems like a lot of work, especially when a hip-hop song could be sampling half a dozen different sources, who themselves could be sampling. Its like sampleception!

On the other hand, if licensing is necessary, we'll probably never see Earthbound again in the US. Almost half the musical inspiration on the linked page should be public domain now, and some of the other songs come from license-friendly bands (The Who and The Doors both have songs in Rock Band, so someone is willing to license for video games. The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" has already been licensed for the theme to CSI, and other commercial usage on its own). Where things get tricky would be The Beatles - AppleCorp has been super protective of how The Beatles music is licensed and made available. Hell, it took over 10 years just to get their discography into iTunes!

At the end of the day, I'd love to hear that Nintendo/NOA were actively working with these rights holders to get all the ducks in a row. I'd love to see a re-release of Earthbound.

Barring that, I'm not sure how I'd feel about re-arranging a dozen songs across the game. Its been nearly 15 years since I last played through it, but would I notice if Blech's Factory didn't have a song that very closely resembled Pink Floyd's Money? I'd probably be able to live with it, so long as the new music could continue to replicate that original feeling.

On the Earthbound music issues, I'm guessing that the parody/homage tunes may not be a problem but the direct rips probably would be.

There was a bit of chatter by Itoi lately about the series, so maybe he finally caved on tweaking the music? Apparently Iwata (who was on the Mother 2 programming team) was prodding him about the series again. Last time that happened we got Mother 3 remade on the GBA.